E-Gold Indicted For Money Laundering

Doug Jackson, Reid A. Jackson and Barry K. Downey have been indicted by the US Government for operating e-gold, http://www.e-gold.com private digital gold currency, illegally. They operated in Melbourne having been indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. They are accused of running an unregulated financial network which catered to criminals laundering illegal money.

Jeffrey Taylor, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and other Justice Department. Officials said they expect the three will surrender in Washington DC at a later date.

A four-count indictment was handed down charging E-Gold Ltd., Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. and owners Dr. Douglas L. Jackson, of Satellite Beach; Reid A. Jackson, of Melbourne; and Barry K. Downey, of Woodbine, Maryland. Each was charged with conspiring to lauder monetary instruments; conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business; operating an unlicensed money transmitting business; and transmitting money without a license in Washington, D.C.

The federal, State and local task force operated for 2 1/2-years spearheaded by the U.S. Secret Service in Orlando, along with IRS, FBI and other state and local police agencies. Federal prosecutors obtained a court ordered search warrant and allegedly seized millions of dollars. That resulted in at least 58 account holders being exposed and many thought to be criminals laundering illegal money though E-Gold operations and transactions.

“Douglas Jackson and his associates operated a sophisticated and widespread international money remitting business, unsupervised and unregulated by any entity in the world, which allowed for anonymous transfers of value at a click of a mouse,” Taylor said. “Not surprisingly, criminals of every stripe gravitated to E-Gold as a place to move their money with impunity. As alleged in the indictment, the defendants in this case knowingly allowed them to do so and profited from their crimes.”

The indictment charged that “EGold” digital currency functioned as an alternative payment system and was purportedly backed by stored physical gold. It charged that customers needed only to provide an e-mail address to open an account and that no other customer information was verified. The indictment accused some customers of using fictitious names such as “Mickey Mouse,” “Donald Duck” and “No Name” and could conduct international transactions without any government regulation.

Because of that, it became a “highly favored method of payment” by investment scammers, credit card and identity fraud thieves, and sellers of Internet child pornography, authorities said.

A call to E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve offices the founder denies charges. Dr. Douglas Jackson, Chairman and Founder of E-Gold, speaking on behalf of his fellow Directors and both companies vigorously denies the charges, taking particular exception to the allegations that either company ever turned a blind eye to payments for child pornography or for the sale of stolen identity and credit card information.

Dr. Jackson stated, “With regard to child pornography, the government knows full well that their allegations are false, yet they highlight these irresponsible and purposely damaging statements in order to demonize E-Gold in the eyes of the public. During the Inquisition, accusations of witchcraft and heresy were used to sanctify torture and seizures of property. In post 9-11 America, child porn and terrorism serve as the denunciations of choice. E-Gold, however, as a matter of incontrovertible fact, is the most effective of all online payment systems in detecting and interdicting abuse of its system for child pornography related payments. E-Gold Ltd. is a founding member of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) Financial Coalition to Eliminate Child Pornography.

E-Gold is the only member institution to demonstrate with hard, auditable data a dramatic reduction of such payments to virtually zero, while billions of child porn dollars continue to flow through other (heavily regulated) payment systems. [Most members, that is, all the banks and credit card associations are utterly unable to even provide an estimate of the volume of such payments processed by their systems. eBay’s PayPal subsidiary, who may have the ability to make such a determination, has refused to do so and has indicated they destroy payment records after two years.] What is worse, until August 2005 when NCMEC courageously broke ranks with US law enforcement agencies and began directly notifying E-Gold of criminal sites via the CyberTipline, component agencies of the US Department of Justice purposely concealed their knowledge of child pornography abuses from E-Gold’s investigators, subordinating actual crime fighting to a policy agenda designed to dirty up E-Gold.”

Click HERE to read Dr. Jackson’s complete statement of denial.

Source by Michael Webster